Quiet now, but that's a far cry from what was happening with the Ottawa mob in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Back then a man's life was worth $10,000.

And in 1989 there was an extra $5,000 if the mob boss had a beef with the target.

Three years after Ottawa insurance salesman Jack Martin was killed at his front door - shot 22 times - drug dealer Frank Cosentino was killed with a single rifle blast.

Martin was just trying to save his wife, who'd been turning white powder to red ink.

By threatening to expose an Ottawa drug ring, he signed his death warrant.

Cosentino was more personal. His hired killer would call it payback for yet another Ottawa slaying.

Martin's death in March of 1989 was the opening salvo of a spate of mob-linked killings in Ottawa tagged to cocaine king Peter D'Angelo, himself publicly killed in a city cafe.

That bloody heyday - five dead from 1989 to 1992 - is over.

Ottawa cops say Mafia investigations are now under the purview of its secretive intelligence branch.

Officers from that branch declined to comment.

Police had a lot to learn when Martin died. Media reports at the time say police were utterly baffled by the hit. Despite releasing composite sketches of his killer, the murder sat unsolved for four years.

Ian Davidson is now the deputy minister of Ontario's corrections ministry, but in 1993 he was an Ottawa police sergeant with a daunting task - head up a task force on organized crime.

Project Octopus involved a half-dozen police forces and blew through $1 million looking under rocks to see what lay beneath.

In 1993, they put a name to one specimen - Peter Verzeroli.

The Gloucester man was arrested and charged with Martin and Cosentino's deaths after cops found a cache of weapons in a raid of his home.

A single casing - left behind when Verzeroli test-fired the gun he would use - shot down any possible claims to innocence, an Ottawa court heard.

He pleaded guilty, finally remorseful for the $25,000 jobs.

Davidson wears a gold ring engraved with an octopus, telling the Sun in 1999 that the project was a career highlight.

Recently, the mob's public presence has dwindled to rumours.

A Russian Mafia hit was among the theories about the tony condo where a retired judge, his wife and their friend were slain in 2007.

Even a $100,000 reward has failed to shake loose clues to the killers of Raymonde and Alban Garon, and Marie-Claire Beniskos.